That looks like a perfect Saijo. Some of the more ripe ones I’ve had become mush. I plan to go to the Saijo tree in my neighborhood this weekend and see what I can glean.
I’m very jealous of that local tree in your neighborhood @growjimgrow I remember you posting pictures a few years back of your daughter helping you gather the fruit. Wish persimmons were more popular around me. There are probably more persimmons in my yard than I’ve spotted in random yards in all my years driving around this area.
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I’ve never seen a persimmon on a tree other than my yard, my neighbor’s yard, and one yard in Northeast Philly. I tried to talk to the owner of that tree in the city, but he didn’t speak English and we just gave each other the thumbs up. He has a well maintained tree with at least 100 fruit on it.
I have seen several persimmon trees throughout Northeast Philly, but none of them have had fruit on them yet.
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There are definitely more cultivated persimmons in the Philly area. Here’s an impressive one I saw a couple years back in Cheltenham. It was probably 20 feet tall. No one answered the door when I went to inquire about it. Wish I could’ve gotten a couple scions to graft. The house also had many jujube and Asian pear trees.
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I’ve never seen any persimmons grown around here. I bet there must be at least one other person in this city of 90,000 that is trying to grow at least American persimmons. If there are any, I haven’t found them yet.
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A friend mailed me some fruit from Don Compton’s place (minus the Jiro which is grown at my friend’s place). Picking out the largest and smallest of those to give a sense of size variation.
There was a larger blue fruited persimmon, but got smashed and arrived spoiled. Of what little blue fruited persimmon I have sampled, I’m not that impressed. The aesthetics make them very pretty and stark contrast to other “regular” persimmon, but they lack flavor, sweetness, and have a gritty texture.
My friend is positive that the “great wall” persimmon is a mislabel, possibly/probably a NG. Whatever it is, it’s flesh is brilliantly red. The flavor is rich, sweet but not excessively so. It’s absolutely stunning, nearly scarlet in the right light.
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I once performed an “experiment” with store-bought Hachiya. I placed some into plastic bags with apples and left in a room. Others were placed into cardboard box and left in a cool porch.
Ones which were with apples at room temperature ripened faster, but once the second (cold) group also ripened they were more sweet and tasty.
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I’m in zone 7a, Silver Spring MD.
Saijo was my favorite for several years. A very tasty variety.
This year I got first fruits on a Giombo tree from Just Fruits and Exotics planted in 2017. Fruits are very big, beautiful, taste is similar to Hachiya and maybe Saijo.
I also got first fruits on Chienting tree. Bought it from JFE in 2018. Fruits are also large and tasty, but it looks like they don’t lose astringency well.
Inchon planted in 2018 as well had a couple of fruits but dropped them.
Got few fruits on Honan Red. Medium to small, pretty sweet.
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Great looking fruit. How tall is your Giombo tree? Also, do you think Honan Red is as good? I have both grafted in pots and trying to decide which one gets a space in the ground.
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I would probably prefer Giombo and Saijo over Honan Red. But maybe I need to eat more of the latest, I’ve just tried first fruits.
Giombo grows very tall. I have it in open location, but the tree decided to have thin trunk of some 14 feet high, so I had to prop it. Already cut tipping points, hopefully it’ll become more established.
Not my own tree, but this one is in my neighborhood and every time I walk by it makes me want to plant a persimmon tree. Maybe next year! This one looks so productive, though no clue what the fruit quality is like:
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this persimmon looks larger than the flat fuyus i been seeing locally. you should ask them what variety
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Yes! You can say a whole forum of maritime growers are super curious about its ID!
I’d guess Izu or Ichi.
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Awesome!!!
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Good eye! I’m surprised he was even wearing socks at all. Usually he runs around the yard barefoot.
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Perfect! Print out that pic for keeping!!
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Using the CO2 from Pepsi hasn’t worked- the persimmons were still astringent after 4 days. I did another round using baking soda and vinager and even after a week, that didn’t work either. I’ve ordered a bike pump which comes with a 20g CO2 cartridge and will give that a shot.
If that doesn’t work, I’ll probably give up on CO2 and try freezing them. But, while non-astringent (not even a hint) is most important to me, I really don’t like goopy texture. I guess the other possibility is to try drying them. Or just graft over to non-astringent varieties and hope they don’t die…
One persimmon which has been non-astringent are the ones on my Miss Kim that went through some light freezes.
I just picked these last night:
They were ~20 brix and soft to the touch. While I don’t really like fruit that soft, they were good enough that I ate the whole fruit (often I just have a small sample, then pass it on) and my wife liked them.
One persimmon I’d really like for the CO2 treatment to work is Nikita’s Gift. Here’s one which was 35 brix, but still astringent, even after the CO2 treatment and a few weeks on my counter. It was somewhat-edible, but still had more astringency left than I’d like. Even at 35 brix, it wasn’t much sweeter than the 20 brix Miss Kim, likely due to the astringency.
I think I’ve got a few NG left on the tree, so I’ll need to see if they are better.
One Picundo which went through the CO2 and a couple weeks on the counter was OK. 17 brix and only a hint of astringency left.
I picked most of the remaining Chienting yesterday. The tree has started to drop it’s leaves, but there are still a few which give it an interesting look.
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